Around 2:00 AM one July night in 1963, in the shadowed outskirts of Eastlake, Ohio, an experience unfolded that would linger in my memory for decades. The world was quiet, save for the occasional distant hum of bulldozers clearing land for a new housing development. The road I lived on ended at a recently cut young wood, untouched by roads or houses, framed by more woods and a distant, shuttered elementary school.
Johnny and I had been setting up my telescope to glimpse Saturn, assembling all but the lenses out in the front yard. Suddenly, a shining light blazed across the sky—at first, I thought it was a meteor. But as I glanced back toward the construction site, there it was: a bright, off-white glow shaped like a large coke can, or maybe the open door of some vast structure. Johnny could make out a surrounding framework as well.
Our curiosity raced. Should we investigate or finish setting up the telescope? We chose the latter, dashing into the house to retrieve the lenses. But when I looked back as I opened the door, the light had vanished, as if it had never been.
The next day, we returned to the rough excavation site, searching for traces of a landing, but the churning earth revealed nothing. Over the years, our conversations revisited that strange night—Johnny’s recollections grew more detailed, describing landing struts and figures outside the craft’s threshold, while my memory clung to its brilliance and odd shape, like an open door inviting wonder.
As an amateur astronomer, I reached out to friends at the Warner Swasey Observatory at Case Western Reserve University to inquire if any meteor events had been recorded that night, but none had been reported.
A curious detail adds to the mystery: just three miles north by Lake Erie stands Cleveland’s largest power plant, once the source of a major regional blackout. Some theorize these enigmatic visitors are drawn to such sites, adding an eerie layer to our encounter.
Looking back from decades away, that summer night remains a haunting reminder of unexplained light in the dark, and a tale shared quietly between two friends watching the stars.